Queen Anne and Oxford: The Royal Visit of 1702 and Its Aftermath.

Anne's accession was greeted warmly in the University of Oxford, the intellectual centre of Toryism in the early eighteenth century, and she made Oxford the destination of one of her earliest excursions out of London in 1702. Yet Anne never returned to Oxford again, while majority opinion in the university was disappointed at her unwillingness to champion wholeheartedly the high-church cause. It was only after 1714 that the reign of Anne came to be represented by Oxonians as a golden age for the university; the reality was more variable and confused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]